Notes on qeation 1A

1a. 

i. To what extent have digital technologies helped develop your research and planning skills during your Media 'A' Level?

ii. Has using conventions from real media texts in your work enhanced or impeded your ability to be creative?

- The internet has helped research real media products
- Camera for still shots of locations to put in to planning
- Hd camera test shoots planning how the finle shots can look like
- you tube to study music videos and film trailers and openings
- Google to find directing skills and shot types
 

Section A. Question 1b.

1b:
(i) With reference to your study of genre, how useful is it to apply a critical framework to your production work?



(ii) What decisions did you make during the creation of representation in your production work?
The typical conventions for the type of thriller we aimed to produce - psychological thriller - are instead of, as you see in many horrors the way the antagonist tries to kill the protagonist is not through brute force but through cleverness and wit. Also, they protagonist is never just blindly killing the antagonist for no apparent reason, or just because he/she is a murderous psychopath, it is more that the antagonist has some emotional or physical attachment, or they gain something from the protagonists death. 

In our thriller, we did incorporate many of these elements, for instance, Thomas does have a emotional attachment to Emile, they are both friends. Additionaly, as Thomas is...


During our thriller project we tried to represent a number of things. Firstly, we attempted to represent the character Emile through the mood of the mise-en-scene. As his character seems to be 'troubled' we decided to set the thriller in a very rainy/damp climate. This also allowed us to keep in the typical conventions of a modern Thriller which are usually suspenseful. 

To what extent did your work challenge audience expectations?

Plan

Introduction
Introduce the music video and the genre, talk about the stereotypical elements of that genre. Explain who the target audience and why.

First Paragraph
Talk about the cinematography and how the camera angles used attract the audience and how they challenge the audience.

Second Paragraph
Talk about the editing and how the effects used attract the audience and how they challenge the audience.

Third Paragraph
Talk about the Mise en scene and how the props, costume and location are used and how it attracts the audience and how it challenges the audience. Also in the paragraph you could talk about the sound.

Conclusion
Do a small summary on why the music video is challenging the audience compared to similar music videos of the same genre.

Does your product conform to or challenge genre conventions?

Introduction:the conventions of the thriller genre are to do with sound and editing. eg quick cuts and camera angle changes, music that gives tension . it can be to do with lighting, especially the use of shadow. mirrors and stairs are also conventions of thriller movies.The fast pace shots and quick editing are key to our thriller because these excite and can slightly disturb the audience which thrillers are supposed to do and we tried to stick to the normal thriller conventions.  

2) Does your product conform to or challenge genre conventions?

I think that our music video made to the song "turn to gold" both uses the conventions of standard rock videos but also challenges them in the way narrative of the video is set out and shown, it conforms in ways that an audience would expect it to and doesn't really try to be anything other than a rock video that its particular audience would have a positive response to.
The ways that our video conforms to what would be expected in rock videos is mainly the way it has been edited and the overall energy of the video. We used a hand held style of filming the video which gave the video an action packed feel that matched the the style of the song, this created a mixture of high and low angles, and when the two artist in the video are running up the stair case, it makes it feel like a chase scene or a desperation to reach there destination. This frantic style of filming can be found in many rock videos such as slipknot's duality video, our chorus section in particular draws similarity from that style of rock video. 
The only aspect of the video that could be considered to challenge the conventions of rock videos is the narrative with in the video. The way that the story is all about the artist and has an non-linear story where it starts at the end which is the chorus section and uses cross cutting to show the gradual  progression of the band members to there final destination and where they find the instruments on there journey to perform on the roof top. The fact that the story of the video purely consists of the band members and that its about there performance is not done very often, usually a rock video would have sections of a story either with the band members or separate charters or a mixture of the two and then have separate sections with the band performing like Paramore's "Misery business" video or simple plan's "untitled" video.            

How useful is it to apply media language to your work?

    Alot of the time it is useful to use media language to analyse products. By using mise en scene, cinematography, sound and editing as categories to analyse the effectiveness of the product overall a good structure is acheived in relaying the information and it is easier to pinpoint areas which are effective or perhaps need improvement.
    One of the main reasons using media language is effective when analysing a product is the fact that it breaks the analysis down into four important parts. This therefore makes it easier to pinpoint which areas of the product are effective and which parts are lacking which is obviously the whole point of analysis and would definately make the process of improvement easier. It also gives a more structured approach to whichever way you choose to present the information you discover about your product.
    However the negative side to this way of analysis is that when you present the information in this format someone who dosent know media terminoligy will not understand, meaning they would not be able to use this

To What Extent Does Your Work Challenge Audience Expectations

Our year 13 production was a video to a song by the band 'Audioslave', entitled 'Turn to Gold'. The song's production values were typical of the band, with the vast majority of the rest of their three album library being composed of fast-paced, fairly heavy rock music. Our video had the intention of appealing to long-term fans of Audioslave, so it stands to reason that it conformed to many of the conventions they will have come to expect, both from the band themselves and, more generally speaking, the rock genre of which they are part.

• Section 1 - processing of creating our video, related to the question. For example: When creating our video, we looked at numerous examples of 'real' rock music videos, as well as specific examples of videos from Audioslave themselves as an attempt to understand current audience expectations. Naturally, we wanted to differentiate our piece from the rest of the content on the market, so we made a conscious effort to challenge certain conventions while utilising others. Challenging them in this way stopped our video from being stale to audiences.
•  Section 2 - genre conventions. The first paragraph mentioned genre conventions in a general sense, here we will say specifically what they are. Mention other rock videos we looked at, such as Foo Fighters - The Pretender and others (make the rest up).
• Section 3 -